


The Only Thing You Ever Had To Do

by writingonpostcards



Series: Tumblr Ficlets - Check, Please! [18]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 03:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12673656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingonpostcards/pseuds/writingonpostcards
Summary: His job, his choices. Jack is the one missing his life with Bitty. Missing Bitty. They live together and he goddamn misses his boyfriend.Jack worries he's hurting his relationship with Bitty.





	The Only Thing You Ever Had To Do

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObY05ypHoKM&feature=youtu.be&t=1m1s) from The West Wing

Jack comes home late. He knows it’s late. The sun dropped far too long ago and the headlights of his car stretched on and on down the empty streets on his way home. He’s bone weary, and his eyelids are so heavy he’s got them shut in long blinks almost as much as they’re actually open.

The key in the lock sounds loud in the stillness and it grates on his nerves, frayed to the end after days and days and weeks and weeks of grueling practices, and team meetings, and not nearly enough time home.

The kitchen light is on when Jack steps into the hallway and Jack has one thrilling moment of hopeful giddiness before he takes another step and sees it’s empty. No Bitty.

Jack sighs out and heads to the kitchen anyway. There’s a new post-it on the fridge. _Dinner in the fridge, honey._ A little drawing of a quiche. Jack touches the note but he doesn’t smile. As much as he loves them, the fridge has been cluttered with far too many of late, and that’s on him.

His job, his choices. Jack is the one missing his life with Bitty. Missing Bitty. They live together and he goddamn misses his boyfriend.

It’s not enough to sleep curled around him and share a quite conversation in the morning when they wake up together, Jack for his run and Bitty to the bakery. A kiss or two and maybe another conversation in the kitchen over breakfast after Jack’s run if it’s Bitty’s day off.

Jack feels that him and Bitty are living in an in-between state, a state nothing more than existence, where they aren’t getting any further in their relationship.

He wants things to change but he can’t find the time. There is no time.

He doesn’t eat the dinner. He stayed out late enough he had to get something himself before his stomach ate itself after such a tiring day. He drinks three full glasses of water to try and stave off the persistent urge to cry, that ball of feeling in his throat.

He’s scared tonight. To go into their bedroom, and see Bitty, laying there, arm curled to Jack’s side of the bed, facing the door. Will he wake up when Jack starts moving around the room? He does sometimes, and Jack gets to kiss him for a bit and rub big circles on his back until they both succumb to sleep. Jack sometimes fears that Bitty doesn’t remember those moments. Woken from a dream to slip back into one minutes later. Maybe he confuses the middle bit of awakeness for another dream. Jack hopes Bitty’s dreams are as sweet as those moments. He hopes dream Jack tells him he loves him just as much.

He hopes dream Jack treats Bitty better. That they spend entire days with each other, doing nothing, doing everything.

Jack hasn’t even taken his bag off yet. The weight of it is apt at the moment.

“Sweetheart? Is everything all right?”

Jack startles at Bitty’s soft voice. He brings a hand up to his face to check. Oh. He doesn’t turn around.

“Jack?” Bitty’s footsteps tread closer to Jack across the tiles. He halts close enough that Jack can feel his bed-warmed heat stretching out across his back.

Jack doesn’t want to turn around. He doesn’t want to speak. He wants Bitty to go back to bed and not see him like this.

Bitty knows him well though, because really, Jack is craving something different.

Bitty pulls the strap of his bag off slowly and it thunks down on the ground. Jack’s hands are shaking. Bitty steps up behind Jack and presses them flush together, Bitty’s front along Jack’s back. He reaches his hands to Jack’s and threads their fingers together. Jack whimpers. Bitty shushes him gently, then moves their entwined hands around so they’re crossing over Jack’s belly.

Jack drops his head.

Bitty holds him for endless moments and Jack breathes in like he can subsume Bitty’s warmth and kindness and courage.

Bitty waits for Jack to be ready, like always.

Jack runs the words over so many times in his head, that when he actually speaks them, there was no conscious thought to do so.

“Do I make you happy, Bits?”

Bitty continues to rub little circles onto the back of Jack’s hands, at the base of his thumb, stroke up and down his pointer fingers, tell him he’s there with the simplest of gestures.

Jack and Bitty used to have a lot of these moments, early in their relationship. The quiet seriousness of a conversation in the dark. A space where nothing was off limits and judgement wasn’t conceptualised and trust was implicit.

Bitty moves his hands, unlocks them from Jack’s, and turns him around.

Jack’s hands fall loosely to Bitty’s hips, and Bitty holds onto his biceps.

Bitty looks up at him, Jack can feel it even though he’s looking over Bitty’s shoulder. Bitty waits for him again, for Jack to decide it’s okay, he’s okay. He looks into Bitty’s face.

Bitty reaches up and wipes off wetness from Jack’s cheeks.

“Jack. The only thing you ever had to do to make me happy was come home at the end of the day.”

**Author's Note:**

> originally on [tumblr](http://17piesinseptember.tumblr.com/post/151583154962/the-only-thing-you-ever-had-to-do-a-zimbits)


End file.
